English Fluency Monitoring & Management

If you’re anything serious aboutimproving your spoken English – and I bet you are otherwise you wouldn’t be reading my blog! – your English fluency is inevitably experiencing growth over time, it just can’t be otherwise. Regardless of all ups and downs you may encounter while having conversations with other English speakers, your English fluency trend is always going up – even if you don’t notice it!

Anyway, today’s article is about your English fluency management and it’s especially relevant to those who experience sharp drops in fluency resulting in the infamous English fluency issue.

Getting tongue-tied and stopping in a middle of a sentence, getting a feeling as if your head is stuffed full with thousands of English words and you know EXACTLY what you want to say but you’re unable to say anything, making stupid mistakes… These are the typical symptoms of the English fluency issue and what’s really baffling is the fact that we, foreigners, often experience such terrible moments right after having been absolutely fluent.

We’re hitting the heights of our English fluency graphs, our confidence is very high, we’re achieving a near-native level of spoken English, and then suddenly we experience a downturn in our ability to express ourselves! It may even become so bad that on certain situations we find it hard to say anything at all, and it can be very, very distressing indeed…

So how do you manage these peaks of your English fluency trend? How do you prevent the drops from being so sharp? To find answers to these questions, please read the rest of today’s blog post!

The Two Possible Variations of The Peak
of Your English Fluency Graph

When you reach your top performance in terms of fluency and ability to express yourself properly when conversing with other foreign and native English speakers, you have two possible future scenarios for your future fluency graph.

Number one – you may quite naturally stay more or less at the same level as depicted by the red graph. Plenty of foreigners manage to stay in this state of fluency for long periods of time – some even permanently – largely due to the fact that they’ve acquired their spoken English outside classrooms.

Number two – you may experience sudden drops in fluency which are represented by the green graph. Why it happens in certain people depends on a multitude of different factors, but the most common ones are the following:

speaking too fast;

trying to match native English speakers in terms of pronunciation;

becoming overconfident;

preparing sentences in your head before speaking out loud.

I think it’s quite obvious what I’m trying to say here – if you allow yourself to get carried away and become too excited, you run the risk of reaching a point where your brain simply can’t handle it any more. You basically create an information overload situation for yourself and then you’re stuck in a limbo of poor English fluency for quite some time.

Therefore it’s paramount that you spot any signs of overconfidence and don’t allow your English fluency graph reach the state of saturation where the information overloadgets the better of you. As you can see in the image below, you’re so much more likely to retain your fluency for longer periods of time if you always pay close attention to how well you can speak in terms of speed, pronunciation and ability to use all sorts ofidiomatic expressions and collocations.

How you do the actual monitoring and fluency management? Well, keep reading my friend and you’ll find it all out!

Fluency Management Methods

It’s easy to get excited if you find yourself chatting to someone and you’re feeling like born English speaker! The feeling is exhilarating, there’s no doubt about it, but you simply have to learn how to curb your excitement. The problem is that trying to impress someone often makes you start speaking to fast OR overdo your pronunciation.

You may think it doesn’t happen that often, but if you think about it for a while you’ll have to agree that sometimes you do want to show off your spoken English skills.

It might be your boss whom you’re trying to impress when he comes to you asking performance related questions. It might be a member of the opposite sex who you’re talking to, and by speaking like a native English speaker you’re subconsciously trying to evoke interest in that person towards you. It might be just about anybody who happens to be your conversation partner – if you’re eager to prove your ability as an English speaker, you might fall victim to the pitfall of your own arrogance!

What happens in those situations is – you simply start speaking too fast or you’re trying to pretend you’re capable of pronouncing words just like native speakers do. Next thing you know – your mind seizes up and you find yourself in a situation where you constantly stumble upon words and just can’t say what you want to say!

To prevent this from happening, you should learn to do the following things.

1. When you spot the early signs of excitement, FORCE yourself to speak slower and don’t fall for the common misconception that fluency in a language requires you to speak as fast as possible. Just read my analysis of an interview with the actor Benicio Del Toro, for instance, and you’ll see that speaking slowly isn’t necessarily a sign of lack of English fluency.

Yes, I know how it feels like when you know everything you want to say and you just want to spit it all out at once, but you simply have to realize that that’s exactly what causes the English fluency issue! So you just have to purposefully slow down your speech and calm yourself down at the same time:

use hesitation filler phrases to fill awkward pauses while you’re considering what to say – such as “Well…”, “Let me see…”, “All right, so…” and similar. This way you’re buying more time for yourself to think of exactly what you’ll say instead of frantically saying just SOMETHING;

2. Personally I find that when I’m getting very, very comfortable with pronouncing words with nearly perfect pronunciation, soon enough I’ll realize that I’ve gone too far and for some reason my mouth just can’t handle it. My lips start twisting and I get a feeling as if I have a hot potato in my mouth! Yes, yes, I know you’re going to tell me that it’s exactly how some describe the way native English speakers speak!

My experience combined with experience of my customers, however, tells a completely different story. Instead of aiming for perfect pronunciation you should find the right balance at which you’re feeling comfortable and your English fluency is STABLE.

The key here is to not to get too carried away with pronouncing “r”, “w”, “d”, “t”, “th” and other specific English sounds super-correctly. My personal approach, for example, involves the following things:

pronouncing words CLEARLY AND SOMEWHAT SLOWER as opposed to muffled speech and mumbling often experienced in native English speakers;

pronouncing the “s”, “z”, “t” and “d” sounds distinctly because it somehow organizes other sounds and helps you maintain your fluency;

3. It’s VERY IMPORTANT to stay calm and focused on what you’re saying if you’re conversing with someone who’s constantly trying to rush your speech!

I’ve known a good few native English speakers in my life who’ll interrupt you at your slightest hesitation thus making it very, very difficult for you to have a normal conversation. It’s especially hard for us, foreign English speakers, because we’ll feel that they make assumptions about our level of English – it’s kind of as if they’re thinking “Hey buddy – you can’t speak as fast as me? I’m not going to waste my time on you then!”

In reality on many occasions those folks don’t think like that; over years I’ve come to realize they would speak in the same manner even with native speakers. There’s something about their personality that makes them cut your story short, stray off the topic and basically not pay attention to what you’re trying to say.

I can’t stress this enough because I’ve experienced terrible English fluency drops and confidence problems in the past having such conversations where I’ve been trying to please the other person.

Basically here’s what you should bear in mind in order to stay focused and calm at all times:

make it your habit to finish off what you’ve been saying even if the other person interrupts you three times while you’re trying to make your point. Ignore it – it’s them being impolite, not you! – and when you’re finished, say something like: “You were saying something?”

learn to remain calm and retain your inner peace because such conversations are often very irritating and have huge potential to make you feel like an idiot. Take a few deep breaths, and say to yourself: “I’m absolutely calm, focused, and I will not become agitated”;

probably most importantly – always perceive yourself as an equal to others ❗ ; don’t think of yourself as a lesser person just because you’re a foreign English speaker or because your level of spoken English is a bit lower than that of the other person’s!

On the finishing note, remember that the easiest way of getting out of a situation when you really can’t say anything without risking to trigger a sharp fluency drop is by admitting just that. If you simply don’t have an opinion on the topic being discussed, just say “Sorry, but I don’t really know anything about …” or “Sorry, but I’m not into …” We foreign English speakers will often try to say just something because it’s kind of expected from us (once again it comes back to you trying to prove yourself and show off!) and not look at the actual matter at hand.

Thanks a lot for reading!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red?Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

First of all – well done with your English fluency development, I’m glad you posted this comment so that others can see that spoken English practice pays off!

Now, your questions.

1) It’s totally OK to use filler-phrases, and there’s nothing wrong with using “you know?” and similar overused phrases. Everyone says those things, and even today I was listening a radio-interview with some athlete (native English speaker) and he kept repeating “You know?” in every sentence. So, all in all, for as long as you don’t get totally stuck without being able to say anything, no – it’s not necessarily a fluency issue.

2) It’s totally natural. When I’m stressed out, angry etc., I still find it much harder to express myself in English. Read more about it here:

3) I’ve been training my British and American as well, and here’s what I can tell you from my own experience.

I find it easiest to speak with the respective accent speakers, i.e. – speaking American English with Americans etc.I don’t have a lot of opportunities for that though, so I mostly practice all by myself, and it’s perfectly fine because you don’t necessarily need a conversation partner – all you need is to listen out for specific ways words are pronounced and then repeat it, that’s all.

Having said that, I’ve been feeling lately that my own pronunciation becomes more American-like by the day, and I just can’t help it. So, I’ve sometimes been using my American pronunciation lately even when speaking with Irish people at work and on the street, and there’s no embarrassment whatsoever. So I’d say that at the end of the day it’s all about how long you’ve been practicing -when it becomes your second nature, you’re no longer concerned.

Hope it helps!

Regards,

Robby

Indrajit Kar

Hi Robby,
i have always been studying english the traditional way, in fact the schools i have gone to have all been eng medium but still there was no serious spoken eng there which really became an impediment for me too…but lately i have realized that i need to work on my english so since the last 7-8 months or so i intensely started out on the spoken part of it…there have so many different phases…ups downs…mistakes…shaken confidence issues…but after all these days of toil i can now finally call myself fluent… i mean…i can handle in every situation, can improvise anything that i want to say…well i do make mistakes sometimes but i guess thats alright but then some things that i’d like to talk to you are about are –
1)when im speaking i sometimes get stuck abruptly and then i use ”you know” to fill the gaps…is this ok or a fluency issue ??

2)when im highly animated or overwhelmed with emotions i make so many mistakes then and even worse, words just stop getting flowed…as if my fluency level drops…

3)and i have noticed when im trying to speak in a BrE or AmE accent i get slower and get embarrassed thinking that other people might feel bad about it and call me snobbish and that holds me back from talking in that accent…

Thanks for your comment Adriano, and I have to say you’ve achieved a very good level of English in a year!

Especially I’d like to point out that I’m amazed at how you express yourself using words your own unique way. Yes, it might sound awkward, but I’m certain with enough practice you’ll get there and given another year you’ll be much more fluent!

Keep up the good job as well!

Regards,

Robby

Adrianolemosantanna

Hi Robby,
I’ve been reading your text about get excess of confidence, about become good at english and I have to agree with in all issues descripted here. I started to learn english, 12 months ago, and today I can speak about something in english more easy than before I start.
Of course, is not so easy, learn a new language, because there are several expressions idiomatics and also that’s situation which you are wanting to tell out what you think about the topic, or even you understood everything but something wrong is happening that you’re unable to express yourself. By my point of view, the most important word that I can carry to me is CONFIDENCE, however is need to take care, as you said in your post sometimes non native speakers acquires trouble due this loud trusth way of behaves up in the face of situations.
Keep good job,

Hi Munki Cho,nnAnd thanks a lot for your comment!nnI’m very glad you find my blog useful and even though it’s not generally aimed at English learners but rather improvers, I believe both will find useful tips and tricks on how to improve their spoken English and fluency.nnThanks!nnRobby

I want to learn english & strengthen my vocabulary. Your blog is very helpful for me as it is always interesting & gives something new & unique. Thanks for this.

Munki Cho

Robby, nI used visit this site an re-read your blog whenever I have a time. I want to say Thank you for about this, I think your site is most useful to the person who likes learning English.nnAlso today’s topic is very useful, good to read and providing good information to learn English.nnThanks, nMunki.

Builds your English confidence - no more situations when you stop and hesitate when speaking English!

I’m Robby, and I’m a non-native English speaker. Throughout my entire life I’ve always wanted to speak in English fluently, but because of the way English is taught in schools, I always struggled with my spoken English.

Then, one fine day, after years of constant pursuit of English fluency, I realized the key aspect of spoken English improvement – learning English phrases and word combinations instead of studying grammar rules and trying to construct sentences in your head from scratch!

If you’re interested in improving your English fluency too, please check out the English Harmony System which is a product I created to help all my fellow foreigners to better their spoken English and achieve so much more in professional, social and personal life.